Testament

by Nino Ricci

  Only some months after we had passed Yohanan on the Jordan we had word he had been arrested by Herod for denouncing his marriage to his brother’s wife. Of Yohanan’s acolytes, it was said that some had been killed for resisting Herod’s men and the rest had dispersed, fleeing into the desert. I was desperate then to hear word of Yeshua, but short of taking to the road and scouring the Judean wilderness, I did not know what path lay open to me. For weeks then I could not sleep for the thought of how I had passed him by, and for wondering if I might not have recalled him to us then, and so saved his life. But just when I thought I could not go on for the uncertainty, one of my sons, Shimon, who worked at the capital, brought me hope, saying he had passed someone resembling his brother preaching outside the Tiberias gates.

  Shimon lived at Ammathus then, to be near his work, and I went to stay at his home to see if I might catch sight of the man and know if he was my son. But for many days we had no further news of him, nor indeed did he appear again at the gates of Tiberias. Then one day at his work, Shimon heard talk of a teacher by the name of Yeshua who had recently set himself up in Kefar Nahum, and who preached without charge in the assembly house there to all who were ready to hear him.

  I said to Shimon, I will go ahead to see if he is the one. For the truth was I did not have the courage to go to him plainly and so wished to hide myself in the crowd to see what had become of him.

  There was a boat out of Tiberias for Kefar Nahum, which collected goods at the tollhouse there. I asked among the other passengers about the teacher Yeshua but none had heard of him. Then I asked what word there was in Tiberias on the fate of Yohanan and was told that surely he would soon be set free, because the people loved him and Herod would not long risk their displeasure. I was somewhat comforted by this, for it seemed Herod had arrested him merely to show his authority, and would not trouble himself to pursue his acolytes.

  I had never been to Kefar Nahum and was surprised by its harbour, nearly as large as that of Tiberias, with several breakwaters and piers. But the town itself appeared crude and poor, the streets unpaved and the houses all crowded up against the lakefront. The fishing boats were just coming in then with the night’s catch, and there was a good deal of activity all along the water and an overwhelming stench of fish. It was a town of workers and of work, I saw, though also, as I heard, free from pagans, for Jews had settled it.

  I went first to the assembly house, putting up the hood of my cloak to disguise myself, but found it deserted. So I asked in the streets after the teacher Yeshua and some who knew of him said I might find him in the boats on the lake, for it seemed he still earned his keep that way, while others directed me to the house of a certain Shimon bar Yonah where he stayed, but where I dared not present myself. Still others laughed at me and asked had I also come looking for heaven, which was all he preached of. So I understood he was well known in the town but also that people mocked him as they had in Notzerah.

  At midday I returned to the assembly house. It was a large building for the town and the only one that bore any adornments. The teacher of the town was there, an old man by the name of Gioras, along with a handful of his charges whom he had brought to sweep the floors for sabbath prayer. When I asked after Yeshua, he said it was true he had given him a place there in the assembly house so that he might teach his followers. But they were only a handful, he said, and often they met at the house where he stayed. Of his teachings, he would say only that he spoke too often in riddles.

  So people do not understand him and think him wise, he said. But I am afraid he misleads them.

  When I emerged from the assembly house there were three women from the town of Korazin waiting at the door, who like myself had come in search of Yeshua. Except the man they spoke of seemed to bear no relation to the one I knew as my son. They described him as Yohanan’s successor though I had seen him there in the desert with Yohanan’s followers and he had seemed the least of them, lost among the pack without distinction.

  He has come out of the desert to lead us, one of the women said. He cares nothing for the rich but only for the destitute and the poor, like the prophets.

  I did not know what to make of these things, for every person I spoke to gave a different report. I was troubled by that of the teacher Gioras, since he had seemed in every way sensible and without guile, but also by the exaggerations of the three women, for it would go hard with Yeshua if he presented himself as a prophet and was found to be false. It seemed the sheerest recklessness to me, that he presented himself as Yohanan’s successor when Yohanan lay in peril of his life.

  As the sabbath was coming on, I had to make haste to reach Ammathus before dusk. So I departed from Kefar Nahum without any sight of my son and with no comprehension of his plight. From Ammathus, when the sabbath had passed, I immediately returned to my home so that Yaqob and I might confer, for of my children he was the only one with some understanding of his brother.

  Yaqob said, There’s no sin in being a teacher, to mean we should leave him to his task.

  But how could I say to him, Your brother is false, for surely it was a crime and a sin to preach to the Jews, yet be an outcast.

  It happened then that some merchants of Notzerah, returning from the kingdom of Philip, saw Yeshua preaching in the streets in one of the towns on the lake. So they must have said to themselves, Is that not the son of Miryam of our town, who used to trouble us and now calls himself a prophet. And when they came back to Notzerah they began to spread stories about him, and to say he preached only to women, and took them as his wives. Because I was held in some respect in the town, there was no one who would repeat these rumours to my face. But this only worsened the matter, since it was my children then who needed to hear them and my sons’ wives who were the ones to say to their husbands, Should not your mother rein him in, for the sake of our name.

  I might have told them that I hardly cared any more for our name, for the little joy it had ever given me and the great costs I had paid to maintain it. But the truth was that I could not rest now until I saw him, and so was glad of the excuse to go to him. By then every sort of rumour had spread—that he was a rebel and preached revolt, or that he could not bear those of greater authority than himself, or that he preached contradictions like a madman, and one day praised a man and the next condemned him. Indeed, I myself might have begun to fear for his sanity, for surely it was madness that as a bastard he had set himself up as a holy man of the Jews. Yet my fear was deeper than this, that as always he merely followed his will, and would admit no impediment to it.

  Nonetheless I set out for Kefar Nahum with Yaqob one morning to see if we might exchange some word with him. To Yaqob I said, We will invite him home in celebration as our lost brother and son, and so be able to judge the state of his mind. But the truth was I did not know what I would say to him when I saw him. Surely I did not intend to ask him to come back to Notzerah, given the cloud under which he had left the place, nor did I think he could bear such a thing. Yet short of returning to us or at least abandoning his mission, I did not know what it was that he could grant me.

  It was near dusk when we reached Kefar Nahum. When we had arranged for our sleep we went to the house where he stayed, getting directions in the street. A woman came to the gate who surely could not have been one of the wives about whom the merchants of Notzerah joked, for she was homely and simple and old.

  I said to her, We have come for my son Yeshua, to invite him home with us.

  She did not have the courtesy to invite us through the gate, but rather left us there in a fright as if we were thieves who had come. Some time passed before another woman emerged, or a child as I made out, for she was little more than a girl. I wished to be harsh with her, because of the insult we’d been dealt in having her sent to us, but could not find it in me.

  We wish only to speak with him, I said. We have come from Notzerah.

  But she said he would not come.

  I asked her then, not without some spite, if s
he was his wife. She grew ashamed and said that he had none, though I saw that she wished it.

  My pride would not suffer me to remain there, held out by a girl.

  If I could offer a bed, she said.

  There’s no need, I said. And we returned at once to our lodgings.

  I could hardly bear to spend the night in that place, but there was no thought of leaving in the dark. It seemed a tremendous mistake now to have come, only to trouble myself with humiliation, to be sent a girl to turn me away so that I might understand the fullness of his contempt.

  In the morning, just after first light, I roused Yaqob for our departure.

  We’ve learned nothing, he said, and I saw he still hoped to see his brother.

  We have learned he rejects us, I said, and would not hear any argument.

  While we were rolling our blankets, however, a boy came to us with fish for our breakfast and two loaves of bread, saying only that someone had left them for us at the gate.

  Yaqob, still hoping to convince me, said, Surely it’s Yeshua who sent them.

  I saw how the fish was wrapped in three layers of leaves to keep it warm, the way I had done with the food I had brought Yeshua in the streets at Alexandria.

  But to Yaqob I said, No doubt it was the girl who sent them, and still would not give in to him.

  We left the town the way we had come, by the road that ran along the lake towards Tiberias. We had not gone more than a mile, however, before we came upon a gathering of some kind there at the roadside, of people who seemed stopped on their way to the fields, many with their animals or their hoes. There were two boats pulled up by the lakeshore as well, with some men there who stood a bit apart from the rest of the crowd. It was only when we came close that we saw what had drawn the crowd together, for there in the midst of them, changed again from how I had seen him in the desert, fair and well groomed but also manly in a way he had not struck me as then, stood Yeshua, preaching.

  So it seemed he had preceded us on the road, as if by design.

  It’s my brother, Yaqob said, and I saw the excitement he felt, and the strange power his brother still held over him.

  We stopped there at the edge of the crowd. Yeshua’s glance went to us as he spoke but he gave no sign that he knew us, and indeed I thought that perhaps he did not, for many years had passed since he had laid eyes on us. Despite the anger in me that he had turned us away, still I was drawn in by his words, and was amazed how he spoke to these people as if he was one of them, and knew their lives and what they were. It was clear as I listened that there was no madness in him as people said, since he smiled and showed patience and for every question had a ready response. And yet there was a sort of devil in him, for though he smiled, still he was contrary, and though he was wise in his manner, still his words, as Gioras had said, often appeared to make little sense. He told the story of a Samaritan who helped a Judean along the Jericho road, but his meaning was uncertain, for some were angry that he praised a Samaritan and others could not believe him and others still were merely amused at the Judean’s humiliation. For each of these he had a word and yet none of them did he answer clearly, instead merely posing another riddle or turning the questioner on himself.

  There was one man who said, Better to strike the Samaritan dead than take his help, at which there was laughter. But Yeshua answered, You would take from your enemy his land or his house or his goods but not his good will, which it costs him much more to give. And it was clear the man could not refute Yeshua’s argument, though perhaps as much because of its convolution as its sense.

  He did not look towards Yaqob and me again while he spoke. But when he had sent the crowd away he came to us immediately, and so showed he had known us from the start. Only the men by the boat remained then, though out of hearing now, and I understood they must be his acolytes, though they appeared the lowest sort of fishermen and menials.

  I said to Yeshua, A Samaritan shows love for his enemy, and yet not a son for his mother.

  If I love you, he said, it does not mean I do your bidding, nor should I leave the many who love me here for the few at home.

  You shame me before strangers, I said.

  There’s no shame to you if you’re blameless, but only to the one who rejects you, if he does so wrongly.

  I said, Does he do so wrongly.

  But he would not answer me.

  I only know that I must leave behind my old life, he said, and embrace my new one.

  Yaqob, who had stood by silently, asked him then, What is your new life if you must reject your brothers and sisters to have it.

  But Yeshua said, Who are my brothers and sisters but those who love me and don’t pursue me in the streets for fear I’m mad.

  So he rebuked us, and out of pride I could not bring myself to correct him.

  I have been in the streets since I was a child, he said, and you did not object. Why then do you wish to chase me from them now.

  And he left us for the boats that were waiting for him at the lakeshore.

  When the boats had pulled away and Yeshua had not so much as turned his head to look back at us, Yaqob said, Let us go home, and I saw how he had been hurt. I thought then of the sons that I had and not the one I had lost, and the comfort they might have been to me, and yet how often I had neglected them for the sake of the bastard one who only brought grief.

  We must put your brother from our minds, I said.

  So we might have done and forgotten him except that month by month then his infamy grew, until it seemed his name was on the lips of all the Galilee.

  I often had cause in those days to think back on Tryphon, Yeshua’s teacher, and his prediction that Yeshua would be a famous scholar. So it might have been, had I followed Tryphon’s advice and not induced rebellion in my son. I could hardly remember now what it was I had tried to save him from in thwarting him from his natural path—the humiliation of his conception, I’d imagined, except all I had managed instead was to keep that thing always before him. For if I had simply left him to his abilities, he might have been a great philosopher like some of the Jews had become in Alexandria, and even the Greeks would have respected him then and none given much thought to his parentage, in that city where eunuchs and orphans and bastards were commonplace and where no one, if they had ability, was held back on that account. Instead, because I had blocked him, he had at every turn chosen the hardest path and the least respectable, so that upon the shame of his birth he had heaped up other shames and made himself conspicuous, where I had thought only to hide him away.

  It seemed now from the reports I had of him that I had erred even to make him a Jew, for he appeared neither able to take to the thing nor to reject it. So I heard how he accepted pagans among his followers, and rejected circumcision and the law, yet still proclaimed the one God. All this, I thought, must come from the knowledge of his own bas-tardy and of his exclusion from God’s assembly, such that he sought all means to make a place for the outcast and thus justify himself. Perhaps I would have served him better if when we had lived in Alexandria, where we were freer, I had simply offered him up to the pagan gods, for surely no pagan god was as cruel as our own, who so barred a man and all his generations from the assembly of his own people.

  Because of his views, because he flouted the law on one hand and claimed to affirm it on the other, there was hardly a town around the lake where he had not brought down on himself the wrath of the leadership. But he continued to attract many followers among the ignorant and the outcast, who no one else would have anything to do with and who he was able to impress with the skills and tricks he had learned as a boy in Alexandria. Soon enough he had gained a reputation as a healer and even a worker of wonders, though I imagined he did little more than apply ointments and salves, which because they did not kill his patients, so made him seem much superior to the charlatans and thieves who passed for doctors in those parts. My son Shimon in Ammathus had cause to see him from time to time as he moved through the towns on th
e lake, and never witnessed him do more than preach his stories and perhaps give a packet of herbs for a fever. But still the tales of him were spread around, and grew more fantastical with each retelling.

  In the end, I hardly knew what to make of all the reports I had of him, if he was merely bent on destruction or truly believed in the mission he followed and the message he hoped to impart. I had never known him, even as a child, to speak frivolously or without logic and cause, and so even now imagined, for all the contradictions people spoke of him, that there must be some deeper wisdom to what he did. Yet I could not believe that only the ignorant saw through to it when those of learning could not, for the fishermen followed him and the peasants and even the toll collectors, whom everyone shunned, yet the teachers did not, nor many of the elders in the various towns, nor even our handful of Pharisees, though Yeshua preached resurrection as they did and followed their teacher Hillel. Then always there were troubling accounts of him in which I could not sort rumour from truth, for as I knew that he broke certain laws that many called sacrosanct, so was I unsure what others he might break.

  One of these accounts involved a certain man of influence from the town of Bersaba by the name of Chizkijah. This was a person, it was said, burdened both with an undistinguished family and a crippling deformity who nonetheless had been able to raise himself up and gain a position at court. In the early days he had been opposed to Yeshua’s teachings on various grounds, but then by dint of listening to him over time he had gradually been won to him. In this way he came to be close to some of Yeshua’s intimates and saw the ways in which Yeshua comported himself in private, outside the view of the crowds. He began to be troubled then by some of the things that he saw, for there was a young woman, as he claimed, whom Yeshua tried to bend from the will of her father and take to himself for his own pleasure. Those closest to Yeshua, because of their loyalty, would say nothing of this. But Chizkijah could not hold his tongue. When he was unable to get satisfaction from Yeshua’s intimates, he began to enquire more broadly amongst Yeshua’s other followers, to see if he only imagined impropriety or if others saw it. So, as I heard, many who had harboured concerns but had feared to voice them had them strengthened, until finally even the girl’s father confirmed them, admitting the girl was pregnant and naming Yeshua as the culprit.